September 15, 2007

The original Bridezilla

Originally published June 29, 2002

I fixed everything that was wrong with BLOGGER and my "Comments." I hopped aboard my lawn tractor, cut my grass, rode three times around my mailbox in a counter-clockwise direction, and sent exactly the proper vibrations through the ground to correct everything. I parked the lawn tractor in the garage when I was finished, checked my site, and everything was as it should be. I do damn good work.

Now, I'm going to talk more about weddings. I've been married twice and I'm single now, so just go figure how those worked out. I married my first wife in Ridgeland, South Carolina, which rivals Las Vegas as the shit-and-git wedding capitol of the US. A Justice of the Peace performed the dirty deed, and the entire affair cost $20. In retrospect, I realize that I was totally ripped off. That woman wasn't worth $20.

I was married in a formal church ceremony the second time by a Methodist minister named Bill Ford, who ran the Bethesda Boy's Home outside Savannah for more than twenty years. Bill was an orphan raised at Bethesda, and he remains one of the finest men I ever met.

My now-ex and I already had purchased a home together, and we decided to hold the reception there. We spent $300 on deli meats and bread, bought a case of champaigne and a keg of beer, and had my old band Call The Cops provide the live entertainment. It was one hell of a party, and we didn't have any complaints from the neighbors because they ALL CAME.

We honeymooned that night at the Magnolia Inn, a bed-and-breakfast place downtown that brags about George Washington sleeping there when he visited Savannah. We slept in the very same four-poster bed Washington slept in, and I found his wooden teeth still laying on the porcelan sink where he left them. (Okay, I made the wooden teeth thing up. But the rest is true.)

That was October 24, 1992. We had dinner at 1790, a GREAT restaurant, went back to the room, listened to the Atlanta Braves win in the bottom of the ninth inning in a playoff game on the radio, drank some champaigne, then connsumated our marriage with wild abandonment. The next morning, we ate the strawberries and crossants they served at the bed and breakfast, checked out before 10:00 and went straight to the Shoney's breakfast buffet for some real food. I have never been happier in my life.

I loved that woman then, and I have to admit that I still love her now, even after all the pain she's caused me. I don't believe I'll ever forget what she meant to me, because I don't believe I'll ever meet anyone else who will affect me the way she did. I realize now that the person I loved didn't really exist, as I learned the hard way, but she was real to me at the time.

We wrote our own wedding vows, and I kept mine simple. "(Her name), I love you with all of my heart. I want you to be my wife, because you already are my partner, my lover and my best friend. Will you marry me?"

Bejus. She said "yes."

And I'll spend the rest of my life digging her knife out of my back.